Gay leaders to
meet with Schwarzenegger staff

Gay rights leaders in California have been invited to meet with top aides to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just two days before a groundbreaking same-sex marriage bill passed by the legislature is due to hit his desk. Schwarzenegger has promised to veto the bill, so lawmakers have held off from delivering it to the governor to give gay leaders time to change his mind.

But the 90-minute meeting, scheduled for next Wednesday, is purely an outreach event, and the marriage bill will not be a topic of conversation between gay leaders and the governor's acting chief of staff, Margita Thompson, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Schwarzenegger has said he believes the issue of same-sex marriage should be decided by the courts, not the legislature. A separate challenge to Proposition 22, the initiative voters approved in 2002 that limits marriage to heterosexual couples, is making its way to the California supreme court.

But gay leaders said they plan to bring the marriage issue up during the meeting. "There are real people he's going to harm with the veto pen," Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California, the LGBT rights organization behind the marriage bill, told the Chronicle. "Instead, he could be a shining example of a strong leader and someone who is going to stand for equality."

Equality California has been holding town hall meetings across California on the issue, the Chronicle reports, and started a campaign on Monday highlighting different segments of the population that would be affected by the bill. More than 20,000 people have signed an online petition asking the governor to approve the bill, and 50,000 sent e-mails to his office during the first two days of the campaign.